That Indiana excerpt has the implication that the simple choice is the one to make, whereas personally I think the only way you avoid being poisoned in this case is to choose the complex glitzy method :-P

If you spot any bugs in my solutions, it's because I've deliberately left them in as an exercise for the reader! :-)

Humor was never intended to be taken deeply or to be saturated with implications. Clearly, when you are dealing with an XML document, you &lbrack;almost&rbrack; always want to use a well-proved library to retrieve the elements of interest and serve them to you ... even when a “simpler” solution seems to be suggesting itself. XML is a devilish beast that is always offering up more committee-bred complications, and ’tis best to let someone else wander into the fray on your behalf. “Better libxml than me...” Shortcuts here, well-intentioned though they may be, become a pain in the glutes.